Page 46 (part 9)

Only a small portion of the contents of our thoughts, he said, rises into the clearness of apperception, "into the light of perfect consciousness." Many remain in a confused or obscure state, in the state of "perceptions;" but they are there; . . . Descartes denied soul to the animal, Leibnitz endowed, as the Occultists do, "the whole creation with mental life, this being, according to him, capable of infinite gradations." And [[Vol. 1, Page]] 628 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. this, as Mertz justly observes, "at once widened the realm of mental life, destroying the contrast of animate and inanimate matter; it did yet more -- it reacted on the conception of matter, of the extended substance. For it became evident that external or material things presented the property of extension to our senses only, not to our thinking faculties. The mathematician, in order to calculate geometrical figures, had been obliged to divide them into an infinite number of infinitely small parts, and the physicist saw no limit to the divisibility of matter into atoms. The bulk through which external things seemed to fill space was a property which they acquired only through the coarseness of our senses. . . . Leibnitz followed these arguments to some extent, but he could not rest content in assuming that matter was composed of a finite number of very small parts. His mathematical mind forced him to carry out the argument in infinitum. And what became of the atoms then? They lost their extension and they retained only their property of resistance; they were the centres of force. They were reduced to mathematical points . . . but if their extension in space was nothing, so much fuller was their inner life. Assuming that inner existence, such as that of the human mind, is a new dimension, not a geometrical but a metaphysical dimension . . . having reduced the geometrical extension of the atoms to nothing, Leibnitz endowed them with an infinite extension in the direction of their metaphysical dimension. After having lost sight of them in the world of space, the mind has, as it were, to dive into a metaphysical world to find and grasp the real essence of what appears in space merely as a mathematical point. . . . As a cone stands on its point, or a perpendicular straight line cuts a horizontal plane only in one mathematical point, but may extend infinitely in height and depth, so the essences of things real have only a punctual existence in this physical world of space; but have an infinite depth of inner life in the metaphysical world of thought . . . " (p. 144). This is the spirit, the very root of occult doctrine and thought. The "Spirit-Matter" and "Matter-Spirit" extend infinitely in depth , and like "the essence of things" of Leibnitz, our essence of things real is at the seventh depth; while the unreal and gross matter of Science and the external world, is at the lowest end of our perceptive senses. The Occultist knows the worth or worthlessness of the latter. The student must now be shown the fundamental distinction between the system of Leibnitz* and that of occult philosophy, on the question of the Monads, and this may be done with his Monadology before us. It may be correctly stated that were Leibnitz' and Spinoza's systems [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The real spelling of the name -- as spelt by himself -- is Leibniz. He was of Slavonian descent though a German by birth. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 629 SPINOZA AND LEIBNITZ. reconciled, the essence and Spirit of esoteric philosophy would be made to appear. From the shock of the two -- as opposed to the Cartesian system -- emerge the truths of the Archaic doctrine. Both opposed the metaphysics of Descartes. His idea of the contrast of two substances -- Extension and Thought -- radically differing from each other and mutually irreducible, was too arbitrary and too unphilosophical for them. Thus Leibnitz made of the two Cartesian substances two attributes of one universal unity, in which he saw God. Spinoza recognised but one universal indivisible substance and absolute ALL, like Parabrahmam. Leibnitz, on the contrary perceived the existence of a plurality of substances. There was but ONE for Spinoza; for Leibnitz an infinitude of Beings, from , and in , the One. Hence, though both admitted but one real Entity , while Spinoza made it impersonal and indivisible, Leibnitz divided his personal Deity into a number of divine and semi-divine Beings. Spinoza was a subjective , Leibnitz an objective Pantheist, yet both were great philosophers in their intuitive perceptions. Now, if these two teachings were blended together and each corrected by the other, -- and foremost of all the One Reality weeded of its personality -- there would remain as sum total a true spirit of esoteric philosophy in them; the impersonal, attributeless, absolute divine essence which is no "Being," but the root of all being. Draw a deep line in your thought between that ever-incognizable essence, and the, as invisible, yet comprehensible Presence ( Mulaprakriti ), or Schekinah, from beyond and through which vibrates the Sound of the Verbum , and from which evolve the numberless hierarchies of intelligent Egos , of conscious as of semi-conscious, perceptive and apperceptive Beings, whose essence is spiritual Force, whose Substance is the Elements and whose Bodies (when needed) are the atoms -- and our doctrine is there. For, says Leibnitz, "the primitive Element of every material body being Force, which has none of the characteristics of ( objective ) matter -- it can be conceived but can never be the object of any imaginative representation." That which was for him the primordial and ultimate element in every body and object was thus not the material atoms, or molecules, necessarily more or less extended, as those of Epicurus and Gassendi, but, as Mertz shows, immaterial and metaphysical atoms, 'mathematical points'; or real souls , -- as explained by Henri Lachelier ( Professeur agrege de Philosophie ), his French biographer. "That which exists outside of us in an absolute manner, are Souls whose essence is force," ( Monadologie , Introd. ) . Thus, reality in the manifested world is composed of a unity of units , so to say, immaterial (from our stand-point) and infinite. This Leibnitz calls "Monads," Eastern philosophy " Jivas " -- and Occultism gives it, with the Kabalists and all the Christians, a variety of names. [[Vol. 1, Page]] 630 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. They are with us, as with Leibnitz -- "the expression of the universe,"* and every physical point is but the phenomenal expression of the noumenal, metaphysical point. His distinction between perception and apperception , is the philosophical though dim expression of the Esoteric teachings.